Edison

by Edmund Morris

  87. TE wrote to ask the British chemist S. J. Peachey’s advice when conducting these experiments. Peachey was delighted to cooperate with “the greatest inventor of the age.” TE pocket notebook 22-09-30 and 22-12-22; Peachey to TE, 19 Sept. 1921, TENHP; Joseph P. Burke, “Chlorinated Rubber,” ts. memo, 24 July 1922, found on the reopening of TE’s desk on 23 Aug. 2016, TENHP; Francis S. Schimerka to TE, 24 Nov. 1922, TENHP.

  88. Loren G. Polhamus, Plants Collected and Tested by Thomas A. Edison as Possible Sources of Domestic Rubber (USDA Agricultural Research Service, ARS 34–74, July 1967), 7, 190; Harvey M. Hall and Frances L. Long, Rubber Content of American Plants (Washington, DC, 1921), 60.

  89. TE pocket notebook 22-09-30, TENHP (the preceding entry is dated 22 Dec. 1922); Stephen S. Anderson, “The Story of Edison’s Goldenrod Rubber: Constructed from the Records of the Original Researchers” (1952), TENHP.

  90. According to Karl Ehricke, “we finally got the [sound quality] grading up to almost perfect, 98 percent.” Karl Ehricke Oral History 1 (1973) 13, TENHP.

  91. Quoted in Bryan, Edison: The Man, 102.

  92. Except where otherwise indicated, the information in this section derives from “Thomas Edison’s Attic,” a radio documentary by Gerald Fabris, sound archivist at TENHP, 31 May 2005, https://wfmu.org/​playlists/​shows/​15231; and Jack Stanley, “The Edison 125-foot Horn,” a two-part YouTube presentation, https://www.youtube.com/​watch?v=yjPzfTAuZN0 and https://www.youtube.com/​watch?v=2Q4vDBA_38I. Both sources feature contributions from Theodore Edison and Ernest L. Stevens, TE’s music director in the 1920s. See also Ernest L. Stevens Oral History (1973), COL.

  93. TE quoted in Fabris, “Thomas Edison’s Attic.” See also Stevens Oral History, 9–12, COL.

  94. https://www.nps.gov/​edis/​learn/​photosmultimedia/​upload/​EDIS-SRP-0198-09.mp3.

  95. Quoted in Stanley, “Edison 125-foot Horn.” “Father didn’t understand mathematics at all.” Theodore Edison Oral History 2, 26.

  96. Theodore Edison to MME, 25 Mar. 1923, PTAE.

  97. MME to Theodore Edison, 4 and 15 Apr. 1923, PTAE.

  98. MME to Theodore Edison, 1 May 1923, PTAE.

  99. TE pocket notebook 20-08-00, TENHP; MME to Theodore Edison, 1 May 1923, PTAE; TE to Ernest G. Liebold, 16 July 1923, TENHP; New York Times, 12 June 1923. For a sample Edisonian “negro joke,” see Nerney, Edison, Modern Olympian, 244.

  100. Theodore Edison to TE, 16 June 1923, TENHP.

  101. Ibid.

  102. MME to Grace M. Hitchcock, n.d., ca. May 1923, PTAE.

  103. Gelatt, Fabulous Phonograph, 220, 223; Millard, America on Record, 142.

  104. At the Edison Association Convention in White Sulphur Springs, 12 Oct. 1922, a representative of the Radio Corporation of America duplicated some of the sparking experiments in Edison’s 1875 notebooks, connecting them to a detector-amplifier wireless set and Western Electric loudspeaker. “The signals came through with most gratifying clearness.” Edwin W. Hammer to TE, 17 Oct. 1922, TENHP.

  105. See Gelatt, Fabulous Phonograph, 223–24.

  106. TE to Walter H. Miller, 14 Jan. 1926, TENHP (“I do not want to touch this scheme at present….They cannot record without distortion”); Victor Record Sales Statistics (1901–1941), mainspringpress.com; Gelatt, Fabulous Phonograph, 223–24; TE to Harvey Firestone, 19 Dec. 1923, TENHP.

  107. J. V. Miller memorandum, “Laboratory of Thomas A. Edison: Work in Progress,” 30 Sept. 1923, TENHP.

  108. TE pocket notebook 22-12-22, TENHP.

  109. Henry Watts, Dictionary of Chemistry and the Allied Branches of the Other Sciences (London, 1883); Vanderbilt, Edison, Chemist, 277. Volumes 1 through 6 of TE’s copy of Watts (TENHP) are all annotated for “plant extraction” information.

  110. TE to Henry Ford, 16 Sept. 1923. The correct per-acre rubber yield using TE’s figures would have been 661.39 pounds. He gave no reason for adjusting it upward.

  111. Lief, Harvey Firestone, 234; Finlay, Growing American Rubber, 77; TE to Henry Ford, 16 Sept. 1923.

  112. MME to Theodore Edison, 5 Aug. 1923; Norwalk (OH) Reflector-Herald, 13 Aug. 1923. TE’s personal Lincoln, a dark green convertible, was a gift from Ford for this trip and is preserved at HFM.

  113. TE quoted in Henry Fairfield Osborn letter to New York Times, 9 Oct. 1931 (“Osborn, you are always in the past in billions of years….I am always thinking of the future”); TE in T.P.’s Weekly, 29 Nov. 1907.

  114. TE used the phrase “the beautiful hills of Milan” in a letter to his elder sister Marion Edison Page, a longtime resident of the town. She turned it into what was locally regarded as a poem. See “The Birthplace of Edison Dreams of Her Fallen Greatness,” Firelands Pioneer 13 (1900), 716. The following account of TE’s visit to Milan is based on reports in Norwalk (OH) Reflector-Herald, 13 Aug. 1923; Sandusky (OH) Register, 12 Aug. 1923; and Sandusky Star-Journal, 13 Aug. 1923, Image AL00737, ohiohistory.org.

  115. Dialogue from Sandusky (OH) Register, 12 Aug. 1923.

  116. White, Milan Township and Village, 16–19.

  117. DeGraaf, Edison and Innovation, 229; Sandusky (OH) Star-Journal, 13 Aug. 1923. On TE’s insistence, the house was electrified the following winter. Norwalk (OH) Reflector-Herald, 3 Feb. 1924.

  118. Sandusky (OH) Register, 12 Aug. 1923.

  119. Ibid.

  120. Harvey S. Firestone, Jr., reminiscence on the death of TE, 19 Oct. 1931, HFM. See note 5 (“units of life”) above.

  121. Anderson, “Sunday in the Home,” PTAE.

  122. TE, introduction to William Van der Weyde, ed., The Life and Works of Thomas Paine (New Rochelle, NY, 1925).

  123. Ibid.

  124. Albion, Quotable Edison, 108. Albion’s volume is notable, in an unreliable field, for its documentation of original sources—in this case, a TE interview with Edward Marshall in Forum, Nov. 1927, entitled “Has Man an Immortal Soul?”

  125. TE, introduction to Weyde, Life and Works of Thomas Paine.

  126. TE quoted by John F. O’Hagan, undated clip in 1931 scrapbook, “Edison’s Philosophy of Life,” TENHP. TE marked a passage in Darwin’s Variation of Animals and Plants, 230, noting that the Dutch florist Peter Voorhelm had no difficulty distinguishing among twelve hundred varieties of the hyacinth.

  127. “Marginalia Project of Books in the Thomas Edison Historical Park Library,” ts., TENHP. See also Vanderbilt, Edison, Chemist, 283–84.

  128. Nerney, Edison, Modern Olympian, 15. See, e.g., TE’s marginalia in his copy of Darwin’s Variations of Animals and Plants, 356, 358; TE pocket notebooks, 1924–25 passim, TENHP. See also “Some Ideas Sent by Mr. Edison…to Captain Coulter, U.S.A.,” ca. 22 June 1922, TENHP.

  129. TE to Henry Ford, 15 Sept. 1923, TENHP.

  130. Vanderbilt, Edison, Chemist, 275; Finlay, Growing American Rubber, 75.

  131. MME to Theodore Edison, 2 July and 12 June 1924, PTAE; Ann Osterhout to MME, 11 Nov. 1924, PTAE; Theodore Edison to Ann Osterhout, 30 Oct. 1924, PTAE. Ann’s given name was Anna, but she shortened it shortly after becoming Theodore’s fiancée.

  132. Winthrop J. Van Leuven Osterhout (1871–1964) was “probably the leading man in the country on plant physiology.” Theodore Edison to MME, 14 Mar. 1924, PTAE.

  133. MME to Theodore Edison, 26 May 1924, PTAE; A. E. Johnson and Karl Ehricke Oral Histories, 29 Mar. 1971, 26, TENHP. After marrying Theodore, Ann was “at the laboratory almost every day,” engaged on colloidal lead research. Ann Edison to MME, 23 Feb. 1926, PTAE. The substance was then believed to be a promising cure for cancer. Wilhelm Stenström and Melvin Reinhard, “Some Experiences with the Production of Colloidal Lead,” Journal of Biological Chemistry 69 (Aug. 1926).

  134. Marion Edison Öser to TE, 24 Sept. 1924 and 6 June 1923, PTAE.

  135. Marion Edison Öser to MME, 11 Feb. 1925, PT
AE.

  136. MME to Theodore Edison, 23 Mar. 1925, PTAE.

  137. MME to Theodore Edison, 1 Jan. 1924, PTAE.

  138. MME to Theodore Edison, 13 Mar. 1925 and 1 Jan. 1924, PTAE. Mina told another reporter around this time that TE was “the most even man I ever saw. He is happy in his home….But he does not want to be bothered. Nor does he enter into what is going on around him.” Norwalk (OH) Reflector-Herald, 11 Feb. 1927.

  139. “The Most Difficult Man in America,” Collier’s Magazine, 18 July 1925.

  140. TE Last Will and Testament, 1 Feb. 1926, TENHP. The will was slightly amended on 30 July 1931, with a codicil redefining the terms by which Theodore and Charles inherited the troubled assets of the Edison Cement Company. TE’s disposition of his assets (estimated at $12 million in 1931) favored his two sons by Mina, to the anger of Madeleine, mother of his only grandchildren, while reinforcing the feelings of Marion, Tom, and William that they rated low in his esteem. A predictable intrafamily legal squabble ensued. The current (2018) value of TE’s estate would be about $198 million.

  141. Charles Edison to MME, 27 Mar. 1927, PTAE (“Our 1926 balance sheet…is the best one we ever had, with a ratio of current assets of 11 to 1 & in a very liquid condition”); Newton, Uncommon Friends, 7. In effect, TE and Charles swapped titles, TE now becoming chairman of the board of his eponymous company (on 2 Aug. 1926).

  142. For the origin of professorial prejudice against TE in 1880, see McPartland, “Almost Edison,” 201–4. Ian Wills, “Edison, Science and Artefacts,” PhilSci Archive 2007, dates it even earlier, to 1875. http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/​3541/.

  143. Raymond C. Cochrane, The National Academy of Sciences: The First 100 Years, 1863–1963 (Washington, DC, 1978), 284.

  144. Notwithstanding his often tongue-in-cheek condemnation of scientists, TE in 1924 compiled a list of those he most admired in history. They were, in order, Faraday, Tyndall, Ampère, Galileo, Newton, Whitney, da Vinci, Becquerel, Bertholet, Darwin, Pasteur, Humboldt, Helmholtz, and Siemens. He included, then deleted, Volta, Ohm, Morse, and Bell, and he made no mention of Hertz or Einstein. TE to Edsel Ford, ca. 26 May 1924, TENHP.

  145. TE quoted in Israel, Edison, 307; P. B. McDonald to TE, 12 Oct. 1923; TE memorandum, mid-Oct. 1923, TENHP.

  146. Michael I. Pupin to P. B. McDonald, 6 Nov. 1923, TENHP.

  147. TE to P. B. McDonald, 30 Nov. 1923, TENHP. Electrical World never published its proposed article on TE the scientist, and after TE’s death Norman Speiden, director of the Edison archives in West Orange, discouraged publication of the McDonald/Edison/Pupin correspondence for fear of “an unsavory argument regarding priority.” In 1937, however, Speiden presented the letters, plus a selection of TE’s scientific papers, to Harvey Cushing for inclusion in a proposed library of the history of science. “There can be no doubt of their importance,” Cushing replied. “I shall treasure them most highly.” Cushing to Speiden, 27 Mar. 1937, TENHP.

  148. Gelatt, Fabulous Phonograph, 221–28; TE introduction to George E. Tewksbury, A Complete Manual of the Edison Phonograph (Newark, NJ, 1897), 14.

  149. MME to Theodore Edison, 4 May and 29 June 1924, PTAE; Israel, Edison, 457. The most detailed account of TAE Inc.’s long and disastrous attempt to enter the radio business is given in Theodore Edison Oral History 1, 60–76, TENHP.

  150. Josephson, Edison, 471.

  151. American imports of foreign crude rose to 413,338 long tons in 1926, while 77,300 long tons of fresh rubber were registered as “afloat” in December alone. Both figures broke records. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Record Book of Business Statistics, 1927 (Washington, DC, 1927–29), 48–50.

  152. Secretary, Edison Pioneers, to Robert Treat Hotel, 9 Feb. 1927, TENHP; Edison Monthly, Mar. 1927.

  153. “Edison, Deified but Lonely,” Sandusky (OH) Star-Journal, 11 Feb. 1927.

  154. Edison Pioneers 10th Annual Luncheon seating list, 11 Feb. 1927, TENHP. Ford at this time was reportedly the richest man in the world, eclipsing John D. Rockefeller. Gerald Leinwand, 1927: High Tide of the Twenties (New York 2001), 35.

  155. Portsmouth (OH) Daily Times, 14 Feb. 1924; Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin, with the collaboration of William Meadowcroft, Edison, His Life and Inventions, rev. ed. (New York, 1929), 813.

  156. TE to Henry Ford, 15 Feb. 1927, TENHP.

  157. Albion, Florida Life of Edison, 116; Newton, Uncommon Friends, 10.

  158. MME to Theodore Edison, 16 May 1920 and 23 July 1921, PTAE. TE’s onetime personal secretary Alfred O. Tate remarked that what really drew TE to Ford “was the sheer bulk of the man’s fortune.” Sward, Legend of Henry Ford, 115.

  159. The International Jew (Dearborn, MI, 1920), 141 ff.; Dearborn Independent, 6 Aug. 1921; TE superscript on Harry A. Harrison to TE, 14 June 1921, TENHP. TE’s attitude to Jews was common among many middle-class Christian businessmen during his lifetime. In his view, more casual than bitter, Jews dominated the music, banking, and media industries, and were always after a bargain. Though unquestionably biased by modern standards, he had none of the paranoidal xenophobia displayed by, say, Henry Adams or Henry Ford. His fullest statement on the subject was made to Isaac Markens, author of The Hebrews in America, on 15 Nov. 1911: “The Jews are certainly a remarkable people, as strange to me [in] their isolation from all the rest of mankind, as those mysterious people called gypsies—While there are some ‘terrible examples’ in mercantile pursuits, the moment they get into art, music, & science & literature the jew [sic] is fine….The trouble with him is that he has been persecuted for centuries by ignorant malignant bigots & forced into his present characteristics and he has acquired a 6th sense which gives him an almost unerring judgement in trade affairs—Having this natural advantage & got himself disliked by many as I saw in Europe, I believe that in America where he is free that in time he will cease to be so alarmist & not carry to such extremes his natural advantages. I write you this as I can see from the tone of your book that you are trying to uphold the honor of the Jewish race.” Edison Personal folder, 1911, TENHP.

  160. New York Times, 27 Feb. 1927; Finlay, Growing American Rubber, 78, 80–81; Marion (OH) Star and Xenia (OH) Evening Gazette, 28 Feb. 1927; 1927 Clippings File, TENHP.

  161. Xenia (OH) Evening Gazette, 28 Feb. 1927; Albion, Florida Life of Edison, 122; Fort Myers Press, 2 Sept. 1927; TE, “Notes on Rubber Plants and Their Care,” June 1927 notebook, TENHP.

  162. Finlay, Growing American Rubber, 81; TE pocket notebook 27-05-26, TENHP.

  163. Gano Dunn, attendee at the 1927 NAS annual meeting, in News of the Edison Pioneers, no. 2 (1946). TE’s nominator was unidentified.

  164. MME to Chautauqua Bird and Tree Club, summer 1928, PTAE; New York American, 12 June 1927; Finlay, Growing American Rubber, 81–82. See also Lisa Vargues, “In Search of Thomas Edison’s Botanical Treasures,” New York Botanical Garden, 30 Dec. 2013, http://blogs.nybg.org/​science-talk/​2013.

  165. Josephson, Edison, 470; Israel, Edison, 457; Finlay, Growing American Rubber, 82–84, 87, 262; Vanderbilt, Edison, Chemist, 291, 287; TE quoted in MME to Theodore Edison, 21 Aug. 1927, PTAE.

  166. MME to Theodore Edison, 21 Aug. 1927, PTAE.

  167. Finlay, Growing American Rubber, 81. For an evocation of the acrid conflict at the laboratory between TE’s “Old Guard” staff and younger executives unable to prevail against them, see Nerney, Edison, Modern Olympian, 248–50.

  168. Marion Edison Öser, “Wizard of Menlo Park”; Tate, Edison’s Open Door, 298; Popular Science, Dec. 1927.

  169. Vanderbilt, Edison, Chemist, 286, 291; “Edison Hunting for Rubber in Weeds,” Literary Digest, 22 Nov. 1927.

  170. TE Patent 1,740,079, granted 17 Dec. 1929.

  171. Ibid.

  172. Ibid.

  173. Ibid.

  174. Venable, Out of the Shadow, 82.

 
; 175. MME to Theodore Edison, 13 Jan. 1928, PTAE.

  176. Fort Myers Press, 13 Jan. 1928; Jerome Osborn reminiscences, Biographical Collection, TENHP; Finlay, Growing American Rubber, 21, 92–93.

  177. MME to Theodore Edison, 2 Mar. 1928, PTAE; Newton, Uncommon Friends, 10–11; Jehl, Menlo Park Reminiscences, 1134–35. Ford’s purchase of Menlo Park was announced in New York Times on 16 Feb. 1928.

  178. In Oct. 1922, at the New York Electrical and Industrial Exposition, the Pioneers displayed a “Museum of Edisonia” curated by Frank Wardlaw and Francis Jehl. It featured, along with Hammer’s bulb collection, one of the “Jumbo” dynamos from the Pearl Street project, TE’s first electric locomotive, and an “original phonograph with its tinfoil records.” Edison Monthly, Nov. 1922.

  179. TE quoted in Hagerstown (MD) Globe, 2 June 1928.

  180. Emil Ludwig, “Edison: The Greatest American of the Century,” American Magazine, Dec. 1931.

  181. TE on 12 June 1928, quoted in L. M. Roberston, “ ‘Inspirations’: The Plant Studies of Thomas Alva Edison,” ts., TENHP; Finlay, Growing American Rubber, 101.

  182. Finlay, Growing American Rubber, 101; MME to Theodore Edison, 6 June 1928, PTAE.

  183. MME to Theodore Edison, 26 Mar. 1928, PTAE; Thomas Jeffrey, Edison family historian, to author, 19 Mar. 2017 (”Carolyn’s birth year advanced forward with each decennial census, so that by 1930 she was exactly the same age as Charles”); Ann Edison to MME, 26 Mar. 1927, PTAE; Emil Ludwig 1928 notebook, 20 Feb. (transcribed from German shorthand by Gordon Ludwig), Schweizerisches Literaturarchiv, Bern, Switzerland.

  184. MME to Theodore Edison, 26 Mar. 1928, PTAE; Thomas Jeffrey, Edison family historian, to author, 19 Mar. 2017 (”Carolyn’s birth year advanced forward with each decennial census, so that by 1930 she was exactly the same age as Charles”); Ann Edison to MME, 26 Mar. 1927, PTAE.

  185. TE quoted in Superior (WI) Telegram, 9 July 1923. The author has, with permission, copied the last thirteen words of this sentence from Jerrard Tickell’s Odette (London, 1949).